10/20/2026 Jenny Applequist
Rakesh Kumar has a new general-audience book, released in October 2026. Entitled The Chip Age, it aims to give readers a broad grasp of the history and role of chips today and in the future. No prior technological knowledge is assumed, but the intended audience encompasses everyone from newbies to tech experts. Kumar’s goal is to share a technologist’s perspective to help everyone, regardless of their background, understand how and why chips are playing a central role in human society. The book also offers his reflections on what the future may hold.
Written by Jenny Applequist
For years, Rakesh Kumar has been sharing his perspective on technology and technology-related societal issues with the public through magazine articles and, in 2023, his first general-audience book (Reluctant Technophiles). This month his second general-audience book is coming out. He hopes it will help readers better understand the profound societal, economic, and environmental issues surrounding chips.
Published in the USA, Canada, and the Indian subcontinent as The Chip Age: How Semiconductors Became the World’s Most Powerful Resource (and available in the UK and the rest of the Commonwealth as The Chip Age: How Chips Shaped Our Past and Will Define Our Future), the book is meant to interest readers who have any level of technological background, including none at all. For the benefit of readers with no prior knowledge of chips, it includes an accessible overview of what chips are and how they’re made. But that isn’t the main goal of the book, which aims to provide both a broad understanding of the history of chips in society and a sense of the core role they play in today’s global economy, politics, and international relations – and also to offer Kumar’s take on how they may define our future.
Not everyone realizes how profoundly chips are shaping the world around us. They sit in the background of many of the great challenges and opportunities of recent years, from US-China tensions, to concerns over data center power consumption, to the risks and opportunities presented by AI.
“This is something that people should be aware of, because it’s affecting their daily lives, it’s affecting the country, the world, in different ways,” said Kumar, who is a professor and John Bardeen Faculty Scholar in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and is also affiliated with the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science and the Coordinated Science Laboratory. “And everybody wants to participate in these debates. And so the least they should do is be informed about all of this.”
Kumar reflected that “postage-stamp-sized” chips have an outsized effect on us all.
“Never before has something so small created an impact so big,” he said. “But the book is not only about demystifying this thing that has changed our societies so much. It’s also about looking into the future: how it’s going to affect our planet, how it’s going to affect our prosperity, how it’s going to affect the world order. And how it’s going to affect people’s daily lives.”
Engineering professors are busy people, and they rarely make time to write for a general audience. When asked why he does, Kumar said he thinks it’s become important for people with technological expertise to participate in technology-related public debates.
“Technology has an increasing impact on policy, on governments, on society. But the reverse is also true. Policy and government and society increasingly have impact on technology – for example, what you fund, what you promote, what kind of immigration visas you support. So the interaction between technology, policy, and society is stronger than ever. And my thinking is that technologists should be a big part of this debate if not in the center of it,” he said. “It’s important to have a debate, have positions – to create platforms and fora that allow you to talk to different kinds of stakeholders.”
Kumar has been doing a whirlwind of publicity for the book, ranging from interviews to op-eds to multiple podcasts. But he isn’t resting on his laurels. He’s already working on his third book, which will take a closer look at one of the hot-button topics addressed in The Chip Age: the increasingly visible collision between the expansion of computing and society’s limited energy resources.
The Chip Age has a US release date of October 20 and is available in e-book or hardcover format at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other booksellers.
Grainger Engineering Affiliations:
Rakesh Kumar is a Professor and John Bardeen Faculty Scholar in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department in The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He is also affiliated with the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science and the Coordinated Science Laboratory.